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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128674">Panic! At The Disco</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittenninja/pseuds/skittenninja'>skittenninja</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [18]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teen Wolf (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Emotional Hurt, Gen, POV Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Panic Attacks, Whump, Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:21:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>897</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128674</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittenninja/pseuds/skittenninja</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Whumptober 2020 Day 18: Scott's hands were shaking, chest tight and heart racing to climb out of his body. Monsters at least he could physically fight. How was he supposed to fight his own brain?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [18]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949905</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Panic! At The Disco</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Scott hadn’t exactly been looking forward to that day’s math class, but it somehow went worse than expected.</p>
<p>He’d started off fine. They all knew they’d be getting an assignment, and that they would have that period to work on it. Easy enough, even if it meant more homework on top of whatever might decide to threaten Beacon Hills after dinner.</p>
<p>Then things had taken a turn for the worse.</p>
<p>Scott was about a quarter of the way through when he felt it. He wasn’t sure what he noticed first, the tight feeling in his chest or the way his heart was suddenly racing, but both of them were incredibly loud, demanding his attention. Slow, calm breaths did nothing, like no amount of air ever actually reached his lungs, instead being consumed by the dark feeling that both rested and writhed underneath his ribs. Scott thought he could feel his heart knocking against his own chest, thumping against bone and flesh as it tried to break free of its prison.</p>
<p>Blinking, Scott tried to focus again on the assignment in front of him, but he found that none of the words or numbers were registering in his brain. He recognized them, he knew that they meant something, but there was a disconnect somewhere in Scott’s mind that refused to let him progress. They were just patches of ink on a page, staring up at him. Watching.</p>
<p>Everyone was watching.</p>
<p>In a manner that was probably too quick, Scott looked up to see if anyone’s eyes really were on him, finding that the rest of the class was too preoccupied with their work to notice him. This confirmation did nothing to ease the feeling that creeped up his spine, a painful sense of panic that seemed to poke needles into his skin.</p>
<p>He brought his pencil back to the page, intending just to doodle if he couldn’t work, but was instantly thwarted by the shaking of his own hand. The lines made by the graphite were as unsteady as his grip, like a heart rate monitor reminding him of how quickly a certain organ was beating.</p>
<p>Scott’s heart palpitated and he instinctively brought a hand up to his chest, as if the action would help in some way. It obviously didn’t, and the fright from his own heart doing something it was very much not supposed to do only made everything worse.</p>
<p>Again, he went to use the pencil, but his fingers felt strange. It was like moving through a watery dream, everything slow but harsh, unreal but uncomfortable. His heart was beating over and over again in his ears, an uneven drumbeat the only soundtrack to this horrible nightmare, and the longer Scott couldn’t focus the more his chest tightened.</p>
<p>His heart palpitated again, and this time he dropped the pencil. The noise was too loud, too loud, too loud, but picking it up again felt awkward and cumbersome, like he had no idea how to use his own fingers. Scott could swear people were looking at him, watching his hands shake and hearing his ragged but stifled breathing.</p>
<p>He was going to die. He was dying he was dying he was dying and he couldn’t breathe.</p>
<p>Scott stood up, but his action was hazy even in his own mind, like his brain was lagging behind. He mumbled a question about asking to go to the washroom and heard a nonchalant “sure,” walking towards the door as soon at that word was uttered.</p>
<p>The hallway was too long. Why was it so big? It stretched on and on in an impossible way, like the floor was adding more of itself just to prevent Scott from getting away.</p>
<p>Why was he even trying to get away anyways? He couldn’t escape this. It was festering in his body, poisoning him from the inside out.</p>
<p>After what felt like way too long, nausea building in his stomach and liquid panic coursing through his veins, Scott finally made it to the bathroom. A distant part of him wished he’d walked outside instead, but it was too late now, and he didn’t think he could walk all that way again.</p>
<p>By some miracle, no one else was in there, and Scott wasted no time shutting himself in a stall. His trembling hands fumbled on the lock multiple times and he could feel his body punishing itself because of it, a nonexistent and unknowable time limit breathing down his neck.</p>
<p>So, there Scott stood, hands braced against the door of the stall as if to ground himself. They were cold, fingers numb as the pressed into the cheap plastic. It felt like shifting for the first few times, losing control and spiralling as a result.</p>
<p>Scott hated it. He hated how it felt like his chest was shrinking. How his heart felt like it was clawing its way out, the palpitations being its tangible struggles. How his hands couldn’t remain steady and how freezing they felt, the entire season of winter trapped inside. He hated how his mind seemed to have detached itself from his body, just hanging on by a thread so he could experience all of this.</p>
<p>He hated this feeling, this feeling of control dying and taking him along with it.</p>
<p>And, to make it all worse, Scott hated that all he could do was wait for it to pass.</p>
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